For Point Beach, football playoff with Florence is chance for healing

Point Pleasant Beach varsity football player Josh Lang stacks soaked documents on top of a TV in the home of Eileen Levis as the team gets together to help clear out the house in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy earlier this month.Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-Ledger

POINT PLEASANT BEACH — With a chance to play for a sectional state championship, the Point Pleasant Beach High School football team does not lack motivation. But just in case, it has a backup generator.

When the unbeaten Garnet Gulls host Florence on Friday night at Donald T. Fioretti field in the Central Jersey Group I semifinals, they will not just be playing for themselves.
“I hope it’s become bigger than just these guys,” offered senior captain Quinn Kusma the other day, sitting in the school’s conference room prior to lunch period. “If you have more to fight for, then you’re going to fight harder.

“Personally, I believe we’re going out there as a team and giving the town something different from, ‘Hurricane Sandy.’ It’s the Point Beach football team. It’s something to feel good about. So I feel we are part of this together.

“If we can be any help to the town — not just cleaning up their houses — and get their minds off it for a little bit, hopefully we can be the ultimate distraction.”

Distractions have been hard to come by the past several weeks. Especially for kids like Kusma and fellow senior captain Andre Cochran.

Kusma, 17, has slept in four different locations since the storm crushed the popular shore town last month. After evacuating from their house in Lavallette — only five houses away from the beach — he and his parents spent the night at his mother’s business office in Neptune.

From there it was to his aunt’s home in Spring Lake Heights. Then they spent a few nights in a hotel in Eatontown. Currently, they are renting a house here.

They were not allowed to view their home for a month, having finally visited the neighborhood over the weekend.

“We were one of only a few houses on the street that were not flooded,” Kusma said.
Cochran’s family was not as fortunate.

They evacuated Oct. 29 to his older brother’s house in Point Borough — he, his brother, their parents, the golden retriever and the black lab. The next day they rolled up their pants legs, walked across the New Jersey Transit railroad tracks and eventually to the house.

They live one block from the beach.

From a distance, they could not see the steps to the front door. They could not see the bushes.

“At first I was in shock,” Cochran said. “It was like a dream. ‘What’s going on? Is this really happening?’ Unreal.”

They never imagined they would return home and step into a science fiction movie in scenes of destruction, despair and disbelief. The first floor of the two-story house was filled with nearly four feet of ocean water. Sand. Sea shells. Even a dead saltwater fish. The backyard was a shambles.

There were no signs of the tropical fish tank downstairs. But the cat, Yoda, had trotted upstairs and survived, as moist paw prints revealed.

“Seeing the National Guard on the streets woke a lot of people up,” Cochran said. “I was like, ‘What are Humvees doing here? What are people with assault rifles doing here?’ There were refrigerators on the beach, telephone poles, arcades. It was crazy.”

His parents had bought a second home in Point Borough a couple of years ago as a rental. A real-estate agent, his mom had to ask the tenant to move out so her family had a place to live.

“It’s been crazy,” Andre Cochran said.

Any nightmares?

“Thank God no,” he said, able to smile. “We were living the nightmare. It was real life.”
Real life also meant returning to Trenton Avenue and the high school, although the students missed eight days of classes before returning Nov. 8. Real life also meant football.

With no game scheduled the weekend after the storm, and the state playoffs moved back a week, the team would go 20 days before playing again. Because of power outages and displacements, head coach John Wagner was unable to get in touch with his players almost for a week.

With practice not at all a priority, teamwork transitioned to going house-to-house to assist in cleaning up debris. The players carried furniture to the curbs, pushed brooms and, for many residents, created much-needed smiles.

“We started with our own kids’ houses and it spun off from there,” said Wagner, the former longtime coach at Roselle Park who now resides in Manasquan — another hard-hit town. “You’d go into the homes and saw the looks of despair on peoples’ faces, and then they’d be thanking the kids and smiling, and you knew you were doing something good.

“If anything, the kids had to feel good about themselves, that they were doing the right thing.”

Having shared hardships, having bonded from common struggles, the team became more emotionally connected. For some, the football field became a home, a familiar place to gather with friends and for a couple of hours escape the disconnected routine.
“When I thought about the team,” Kusma said, “it really helped me. I knew I had something to come back to. Everything wasn’t gone. Home for me the last four years, a lot of it has been on the football field.

“You couldn’t take that away from us. So in this sense, football was a huge help. We were already tight as a football team, but off the field became a whole different spectrum of what that means in life.

“I sense a change in myself,” he added, “and it’s probably a lot bigger than I know. I’m probably tougher, and it will probably show over the course of time. It hit home Saturday when we got to see our house. We saw houses completely destroyed and not even there anymore. It’s something I never thought I’d ever see.”

As the team has built a record of 10-0, many players continue to spend their weekends rebuilding. Instead of knocking down opponents, they are knocking down walls. Instead of ripping opponents, like they did against South River in the first round of the states (44-6), they are ripping up floors.

“You see what you can keep, then it’s sanitation, then it’s taking out insulation, tearing down walls, knocking down shelves and knocking down the garage,” said Cochran, whose father is in the construction business. “Basically, everything bolted in the wall has to come out. Marble countertops, everything.”

And of course there is school. Sitting in class, trying to concentrate, doing homework, studying for tests. Trying to focus.

“It’s actually tough to be able to switch back to school-mode from work-mode,” Cochran said. “I’m starting to get used to it, but at first I would come to school and just blank out.
“You would hear the teachers, but you’d be thinking, ‘When I get home, I’ve gotta do this and that. Feed the dogs, feed the cat, my parents will be working on the house all night, gotta do my homework, pick up my brother.’ I was all over the place.

“That first week, none of the teachers wanted to push any kids’ buttons or have anyone snap out,” he said. “Now we’re slowly starting to work our way back.”

Football has continued to be the path for them, a 100-yard surface that, although under some three feet of water for a while, is as comfortable a site as they have. And make no mistake: This may be a small team by classification, but they play big and play well.

Cochran has scored 9 touchdowns this season as a running back. Kyle Samaritano, another captain, has scored 12 touchdowns. Danny Tighe, the team’s fourth captain, leads with 26 TDs and has rushed for more than 1,500 yards. Quarterback Jake Fioretti has passed for more than 600 yards and thrown 11 touchdown passes.

They know they are in for a Friday night fight, but they also know they share a purpose they did not have when the season began.

“I know Florence is a tough bunch of kids,” said Kusma, a middle linebacker and offensive guard. “I’ve seen their tapes. But as a group, I believe we’re a tough bunch of kids, too. Everything about this team that’s been questioned about has been answered.”

Their freshmen year, the varsity won one game. Two years ago, the Gulls won two games. Last year, they made the playoffs for the first time in 29 years. Now, in just his second year in charge, Wagner has his guys on the cusp of an undefeated season.
“We saw signs of this in the summer,” Kusma said. “It was, ‘Wow, he didn’t run that fast last year!’ It didn’t come together for a few games, but after a while, we were firing on all cylinders.

“We play the song, ‘Glory Days,’ after games,” he added. “Even with this whole terrible storm thing, you’re still in the glory days. This is still one of the most enjoyable parts of my life so far, and it feels good to know that I still have it.